If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

I believe that card draw is very essential to any card games especially in Shadowera. Other card games have mana/energy cards but Shadowera uses resources and those resources could be any card you choose from your hand. Therefore, your hand can deplete very quickly. Specially if you plan to sacrifice every turn and use a card every turn. For example, If you have first turn advantage, you start with 6 cards. Ill give you an example of typical rush Eladwen Frostmire start.

Now assuming your opponent survives the ally rush you now have to figure out how to proceed. You do not want to be put into a top decking state. top decking is when a player has 0 cards in their hand and has to rely on their draw phase and a lot of luck to get the card they need in order to turn things around.

Call of the Crystals had very limited choices of draw cards you can use per hero. Luckily, the new Dark Prophecies Expansion gave us a more draw cards to choose from ranging from Blood Moon, Antimatter, Treasured Heirloom and many more. There are now lots of possible draw combinations you can use in order to maximize your draw potential. You have to keep in mind that there are various cards that can give you draw. There are allies, abilities, items, armors, and weapons that can give you consistent draw, burst draw, draw upon death, draw upon attack and even recycle cards.

Draw engines
I consider cards like Wizent's Staff, Antimatter, Tome of Knowledge, Bazaar, and Blood Frenzy consistent draw engines because as long as these cards are not destroyed you can manage to get some draw from them once every turn. Most tourney players will destroy these engines to slow down your momentum simply because draw is crucial and that it can hinder their opponentís momentum

Burst Draws
There are cards like Bad Santa, Honored Dead, and Sacrificial Lamb that can give you 2+ cards upon usage. The advantage of these cards is that they cannot be destroyed like the draw engines. However, these cards lack the consistency since you have to draw them in order to use them..

Cantrips
These are cards that will give you one card once the condition is met. Good examples of these types include Belladonna, Night Owl, Here Be Monsters and Lay Line Nexus.

Recyclers
These cards pretty much allow you to put back a certain amount of cards in your deck and you will draw the same amount of cards. so in a way you recycle the cards you dont need at the moment and you can get them at a later time. One example of these cards is fleet-footed messenger, for the price of 1 resource you are allowed to choose a card to put back to your deck. And draw a card. another way of recycle is taking cards from your graveyard and putting them back to your hand. Technically, if you look at it in a certain way it is like drawing a card from your deck. Cards like shadow knight allows you to return the last ally in your graveyard back to your hand.

There are few things to consider when picking your draw cards. First thing to consider is the type of card that would give you draw, meaning you need to know if you want a weapon, armor, ally, attachment, or support ability to give you that draw. These factors are important because it would affect your choice of draw cards especially in tournaments where you are allowed to tweak your deck every matchup. Also, your choice of type of draw cards has to work in synergy with the rest of your deck. I mean you would not have a honored dead on a solo Gwen deck simply because you would not have that minimum 3 allies needed in your graveyard for honored dead to work.

Another thing to consider is whether the card draw will be unilateral or bilateral. Unilateral simply means that the draw would be one sided meaning only the player who cast the card will benefit. Examples include Sacrificial Lamb, and Honored Dead. On the other hand, bilateral means the total opposite where both you and your opponent will benefit from the card. Examples include Bazaar, Aldmor Conduit and Bad Santa.

Counters
You also need to know what cards can destroy your draw engine because this will affect your sacrificing and gameplay as you matchup against different heroes. You need to know item destruction cards like Shriek of Vengeance, Stop Thief, Artful Squire, Focused Prayer, Spectral Sabre, Sever Ties and many more in order to make smart choices during your game.

Item/Weapon/Armor - Shriek of Vengeance, Artful Squire are used to destroy 4cc or lower abilities or weapons like Wizentís Staff, Ill-Gotten Gains, and many more. Then there is Lay Line Nexus to destroy those 5cc and above weapons/armors. Then we can go to your class specific item destruction cards like Stop Thief!, Smashing Blow, and Focused Prayer.

Allies Ė You can use Captured Prey, Crippling Blow, and maybe Retreat! to prevent draw. You can also disable the ally to stall the usage of ability.

Passive Abilities - Also, you need to know what cards can negate the passive ability of draw cards like Tainted Oracle and Night Owl. Ideally, you can use Layarian Diplomat or Morbid Acolyte before you kill these allies.

Attachments - there are Sever Ties, Spectral Sabre, Morphic Armor, Mystic of the Vale, Jerichoís ability and many more in order to control attachments.

Recycler Ė cards like Death Collector and Spirit Warden can alter the graveyard in order to prevent Shadow Knight loop or just to remove those allies in the graveyard from the game.

I canít tell you the exact recipe for having a great and consistent draw because sometimes you can just have bad luck and do not get those draw cards early in the game. However i can tell you that you definitely need draw cards to be competitive. Most players have about 6-8 sometimes maybe 10 depending on preference.

Draw First

Now that we talked about the different types of draw cards, letís talk about how drawing is in play during a game. At the beginning of every turn, you draw 1 card from your deck. So no matter what even if your hand was empty prior to your turn, you are at least assured that you will draw a card to maybe save you.

Secondly, it happened so many times that players tend to make moves by summoning an ally or ability even before they use their draw cards. It is nice to use that Tome of Knowledge before you do anything simply because that card you draw might affect your upcoming plays. Furthermore, if you have a Tainted Oracle and you know you need cards, suicide it before you make any move by attacking another ally so that you will deal damage to the ally and you get the new cards you need. Before using Sacrificial Lamb on an ally, make sure it attacked or at least used its abilities. Much also works for using board wipes, use your allies to attack the hero then use the board wipe. It just maximizes each and every cardís potential usage. Using those draw cards before setting any plans in motion gives you the ability to have more options to go about your turn.

Credits: I want to thank my brothers in BP for sharing their insights.

Anywhoo, I hope this article helped even just a bit. I added a list of cards that somewhat give draw and my personal views regarding these cards.
Please feel free to put your insights regarding each and every cards and I will update it eventually.

nice article! i'm just a bit confused about passive abilities. aren't passive abilities effects things that go into effect no matter what the state? like for example, aldon's ability is a passive ability. irregardless of him being crippled or anything, as long as he is on the field his ability to give friendly allies the +1/+0 boost remains. on the other hand, tainted oracle and night owl's abilities (cantrip)-these are triggered abilities, right? their cantrip abilities take effect only when they are killed, hence the "triggered" effect right?

sorry, was just a bit confused there. very good article, though-very informative.

nice article! i'm just a bit confused about passive abilities. aren't passive abilities effects things that go into effect no matter what the state? like for example, aldon's ability is a passive ability. irregardless of him being crippled or anything, as long as he is on the field his ability to give friendly allies the +1/+0 boost remains. on the other hand, tainted oracle and night owl's abilities (cantrip)-these are triggered abilities, right? their cantrip abilities take effect only when they are killed, hence the "triggered" effect right?

sorry, was just a bit confused there. very good article, though-very informative.

SE only differentiates between active and passive abilities. Actives are like Jasmine's distract or Plasma Behemoth's ability where you usually have to pay a resource or SE cost and you can only use it once a turn. Passives are abilities you don't have to activate. On death abilities are passives because you don't activate them. They automatically trigger whenever the conditions are met. Theoretically Aldon has a condition as well i.e. that he is in play. TO and Night Owl's ability works even if they are disabled when killed.

nice article! i'm just a bit confused about passive abilities. aren't passive abilities effects things that go into effect no matter what the state? like for example, aldon's ability is a passive ability. irregardless of him being crippled or anything, as long as he is on the field his ability to give friendly allies the +1/+0 boost remains. on the other hand, tainted oracle and night owl's abilities (cantrip)-these are triggered abilities, right? their cantrip abilities take effect only when they are killed, hence the "triggered" effect right?

sorry, was just a bit confused there. very good article, though-very informative.

Pyrogene pretty much summed it up. Passive abilities are abilities that does not need any resource to use like Aldon, While on the other hand, active abilities on draw cards like Tome Of Knowledge requires you to pay 2cc everytime you want to activate its ability.In specific situation like Tainted Oracle and Night Owl, their passive abilities are only triggered "on death" meaning when they are sent to the graveyard that is the only time you will get the cards from your deck. There are other ways to counter their "on death" passive ability by using Morbid Acolyte's active ability or Layarian Diplomat's passive ability in order to negate the passive ability of Tainted Oracle and Night Owl before you send them to the graveyard.

Anywhooo, hopefully that helped cleared it up a bit. Just ask away if you have any more questions =)

"Try and try until you die...or succeed...whichever comes first"

Jo3yb0i - Knight of Dark and LightWarrior of the Blue Phoenix
Greatness, Reborn

I think some more elaboration on Unilateral vs bilateral draw could be touched on. For instance you will tend to want to avoid bilateral draw cards when you are fighting against people with weaker draw engines. On the flip side if you are rushing an opponent it may be worth using bazaar to set up your rush faster than your opponent e.g Solo Gwen runs bilateral draw because drawing rain delays/ITFs negates most of what you draw, so she benefits more.

Quick Links

Play Now

About Shadow Era

Shadow Era is a free to play, online collectible trading card game. It features deep strategy, easy gameplay, and gorgeous card art. Create your account now to play on the web right in your browser, or on the iPhone, iPad or Android devices and take your progress with you wherever you go!